Euterpe
by LoveIsGolden
Summary: Little dribbles based on song lyrics. Please don't take them too seriously. FYI: Euterpe is the muse of music and lyric poetry, which as a Greek god junkie, appealed to me. It has really nothing to do with the subject of the writing.
1. When Your Heart Stops Beating

**_A/N: First of all, let me just say that I wrote this before Breaking Dawn. This was just dribbles based on what I thought would happen. Don't blame me if it's not wonderful. It's not supposed to be. It's supposed to be little snapshots of what could have been._**

**_And I really don't own Twilight. I'm definitely not Stephenie Meyer. And +44 is only one of my favorite bands, not a buddy of mine._**

* * *

**When Your Heart Stops Beating**

_Turn it up I never want to go home_

_I only want to be part of your breakdown_

"Edward—"

"No!" I snarl. "I won't—"

"You promised." Her voice is quiet, pleading. She wanted to be a monster, just like me. I don't see how she could when she's seen exactly what we can do. But she wants it. Because of me.

"Your soul!" was my only argument.

She snorts. "I'm having a sense of déjà vu. Haven't we been through this before? You promised."

I suddenly wish I wasn't as selfishly unresisting.

_She got caught by the four on the floor_

_I picked her up_

_And she'll never get let down_

The room is beautiful. The bridal suite is my bedroom, of course. Only the best for my beautiful, human wife. And of course, no human can hear her scream.

She smiles at me, looking slightly drunk though I know she hasn't had any alcohol. She's so susceptible to caffeine, how would she be with wine?

I lay her gently on the bed, careful to cradle her head like I would a baby. This is the last time I will ever have to do this. This though makes me desperate.

"Are you sure?"

Her smile is beatific. "We have something else to do first."

This lightens my heart. An hour or so more of humanity. Prolonging the inevitable, maybe, but she still has time to stop me.

Half of me wants that.

The other half is anxious for her end.

__

And now I can't stop

thinking about it

All you people at the top

_Don't know nothing about it_

I'm distracted and she can sense it.

"What's wrong?" she asks, her voice catching. "What?"

"Nothing," I say, shaking off my thoughts and staring into her eyes below me with an expression I know she can't resist.

Sure enough, her expression is dazed. "I love you," she says finally.

"I love you too," I say, kissing her temple.

__

W

_So just leave us to our own devices_

_And we'll leave you alone_

_e don't give a fuck what the price is_

My lips are against her neck, listening to her blood flow. "Are you sure you're ready? No more goodbyes to be said? No more experiences you want to have?"

She bites her lip. "Don't let me go back to Forks, okay?"

"Of course," I say, puzzled by her request.

She sees that. "I'm just…not sure what exactly I'll want. I just can't do that to Charlie and Jake…the pack will kill you if they see you." Her voice gets smaller. "And me."

"I won't let you," I promise.

"Bite me," she says, smiling a little at her choice of words.

"I'd do anything you ask," I say, kissing her neck and biting gently into the softest skin imaginable.

At first, she smiles at me. Then her screams fill the room.

_I'll be there when your heart stops beating_

I'll be there when your last breath's taken away

In the dark when there's no one listening

In the times when we both get carried away

When we both get carried away

First, her heart slows to one beat a minute. She's barely alive. As my venom flows through her bloodstream, the skin lightens from its already translucent shade and hardens underneath my hands. It seems to take months rather than days. My head is always on her chest, listening to her rare heartbeat.

And then I realize that her heart hasn't beat for a while.

It's over.

_She says it all without a thought in her head_

_She says it all as she's pressed up against me_

"Edward Cullen." My name has never sounded so beautiful.

"Bella!" My hurried voice is in high relief against her leisurely one. "Are you all right?"

"It's funny," she continues, as if she didn't hear me, "I never imagined what it would feel like to be stone. I don't really feel as if I could stop cars. Or crush bones."

I flinch in my inspection of her body.

"I never noticed that a heartbeat actually felt like something. I guess it's one of those don't notice it until it's gone kind of things. And my blood! I never contemplated what it would feel like without it rushing through my veins. Maybe that's why you could always act like a stone at will: because you feel like one inside."

Her monologue seems to be directed at me but I leave her talking. I'm still making sure she made it through the change completely.

Then I realize I could have been able to read her thoughts. Her mind is completely blank. A closed book, as always. This makes me happy. She was always grateful that I couldn't read her thoughts.

_A little something just to take off the edge_

_A little more and I'll fall off the planet entirely_

"See that deer?" I ask quietly.

"Of course," she says.

"Hunt it."

And off she goes, my little angel of death that I created.

When she comes back, her mouth is slightly smeared with blood. It makes me shudder. What have I done?

_I'll be there when your heart stops beating__hen we both get carried away_

I'll be there when your last breath's taken away

In the dark when there's no one listening

In the times when we both get carried away

W

Our first night as a vampire couple. Out of habit, we go to my room and lay on the grand bed residing there. Unnecessary now, as she had accused before.

"Are you happy that you changed me, Edward?" she asks.

I wait a minute before I answer. "I want to keep you forever and a day. And I'd promised that I'd be the one to do it. Of course, I would have been there when your heart stopped beating, when your last breath was taken away no matter what. And if I made you happy that I did it? Then I'm glad."


	2. She's a Handsome Woman

**_A/N: So sometimes I think that there's a song that completely screams Twilight. And while it's screaming at the top of it's lungs, I write these little things._**

**_Yeah, definitely don't own Twilight or Panic at the Disco. But I do own all the books ever written by Stephenie Meyer (including the short story in Prom Nights from Hell) in hardcover and every CD by P!atD in iTunes. Sorry, I don't buy regular CDs anymore._**

* * *

**She's a Handsome Woman**

_Innocence._

That was exactly what she was. Too innocent for her own good. She was innocent in a nontraditional form of the word. Not a sexual innocence but an innocence of the true nature of bloodlust. It is not impossible for humans to know bloodlust, but she was more innocent than most. She couldn't even hold a grudge, let alone contemplate any kind of revenge.

Yes, bloodlust is my constant companion. It's a combination of a devout Christian being tempted to sin and an alcoholic's desire to drink. It's a physical and mental fight. Whenever I touch her, I must remind myself that in the end, it wouldn't be worth it. She would be dead and I would die myself.

_Sunk the glow and drowned in covers,_

Drowning. I imagine that would be something like being without her. Her internal glow taken away by my hand. My powerful, alien, immortal body actually felt pain when I thought she was dead. Physical pain. I hadn't felt physical pain for almost a century. The "pain" I usually felt was a vague awareness like humans feel after a large injury. I knew that I was hurt but it just didn't seem important. With her, it did.

_Send for all your absent lovers things._

Her affection for the dog wounded me. That was part of her heart I could never touch, no matter how much I might try. She gave away part of her heart to each of us. He and I will always be bound with her love. It is my fault completely. If I had never left, she never would have loved him at all.

_Sheepish Wolves._

His love for her is undeniable; I can see it in his eyes. It pains me to see the depth of his love for her and know that he can give her everything I can't. He can give her children. He can give her a life of light. He can give her old age and, eventually, death. I just wish he didn't know how much better he was for her. For her sake, I wish she knew it. For my sake, I'm glad she doesn't.

_Looking lived in eating buttons,_

I wonder what it would be like to be human. To sit down at a dining room table for food instead meetings. To have her serve me dinner, her face shining proudly at her creation. To feed a baby who insists on spitting everything up onto the plate in front of him or her.

If only I could become human for her. We would get married and, like normal couples, have children. Grow _old_. The one thing I've wanted to do since the moment I met her.

_Wink, just don't put your teeth on me._

It would be so much easier for me if she didn't want to join me and my family. But wasting her life away with someone who couldn't actually live with her was never really an option. It was better for her to move on from me. She's too tenacious for her own good.

_Accidents._

She's a magnet for them. Her lifespan never seemed destined to be long, even without mythical creatures. Before, I was glad for them. Not for the danger they were to her, but because they gave me a valid reason to spend time with her.

Now it's completely different. I'd spend time with her anyway. Now they just make my undead heart race, figuratively speaking. I could live without them.

_Let the evening in the backdoor,_

_filled the room ceiling to the floor._

I love the time I spend watching her sleep. Each time she takes a breath, she smells even more heavenly than normal. She literally teases my senses. Her warmth is a balm to my frozen skin. Her face dazzles me, as she accused me of doing to her. I didn't tell her what I was thinking: That hers does the same to me every time I see her. Her heartbeat thumps in my ear, always alternating between fast and slow in response to dreams I can never see. Her scent, ever intoxicating, is always in my nose and mouth, coating my mouth in her sweet scent.

I just wish I could keep her the same.

_Beat backbones._

Her courage is unparalleled. I've never met a human who didn't get completely distracted by our supernatural beauty. She notices, of course. But others get discomforted by us. Understandably, of course.

She's absolutely perfect. Not perfection similar to a vampire's at all. Her humanity is more beautiful to me than anything else.

_Grazed the poem and made it strange,_

That day in the meadow was the real beginning of my new life. It was my new life with her. She changed me so completely; sometimes it seems impossible that it happened. That a creature as despicable as me was ever fated to be as blessed as I am for having found her.

_I wasn't born to be a skeleton._

I suppose I was meant to do something with this pseudo-life of mine. I can't fathom what it might possibly have been, but I know, if it didn't involve Her, I wouldn't want it. Maybe she was always designed to be mine. I somehow doubt this. As evidenced by him, she would have been fine without me. Maybe because I'm not meant to be in existence anymore, she wasn't meant to be mine. If there was no such thing as vampires—as it was supposed to be—she would have married him. And I would be long dead.

_Go on,_

_Grab your hat and fetch a camera._

_Go on, film the world before it happens._

In the blink of an eye, she could be gone. That's tortured me since the beginning. If only from old age, she would die. She would die and I would die too. I was terrified that I would never get to spend her entire life with her. There was Victoria, ever threatening the demise of my love. It maddened me to let Victoria live. She didn't deserve to. The only one that did was my heart. My heart that would eventually die with or without help.

_Jealous orchard._

Jealousy. I've never been able to get a handle on my jealousy when it comes to Bella. She is the only thing I would mind losing. Whether it's the dog or a human, I'm enraged. She is _mine_. Just as I am hers.

She doesn't seem to realize how much of a jealous creature I am. She doesn't seem to realize that whenever I am within five miles of the wolf, I have to master the temptation to tear his head straight from his shoulders. I would do it too, if only it wouldn't hurt her. She obviously doesn't know the pain it causes me to see him touch her and know that he doesn't have to worry about killing her all the time. She doesn't know the sadness I feel when she shows how much she really loves him. And she didn't know the blind anger that I felt when he kissed her…both times.

_The sky is falling off the ceiling_

She is my entire world. I can't see anything but her. If I lost everything but her, I would take it and be grateful. If I lost nothing but her, I wouldn't be able to live.

_While I'm tucking fibs into a cookie jar._

I'm such a horrible liar. If I had just been truthful with her from the beginning, none of this would have ever happened. I would have just trusted myself enough to believe that she wouldn't leave, I would have. But how could something like me be enough to keep her? I don't deserve anything like her. The only thing I deserve is an eternity of misery. One day, I hope she realizes it. And I also hope she doesn't.

_Bombed reverie._

None of this thinking is doing anything at all. Everything is still the way it shall be. The dog loves her. I adore her. She can't live without either of us. And somehow, she wouldn't be Bella if she could.

_It's useless searching in the cupboards_

_When everything you have is on your back._

Or in your hands.


End file.
